Sunday, March 18, 2007

NCAA Tournament Round 2 Day 2 Live-Comment

UPDATE: Well, sort of on the "dramatic," but not nearly as much as Saturday. Nevermind that I was basically eating the couch cushion for 38 of Florida's 40 minutes against Purdue. More of the same: Favorites continuing to roll.

UNLV over Wisconsin was an upset in name only; some of us foresaw Wisco going out in this round (yet some of us also foresaw Georgia Tech bouncing them, so go figure...).

Also, I have decided that 5-over-4 games in the Second Round (see: Tennessee over UVA) are the equivalent of 9-over-8 in the First Round; it's just hard to get too worked up that it's an upset, except...

USC over Texas! Given the OVERLOAD of hype for Kevin Durant and UT heading into this tournament, his exit in the first weekend is extremely notable (and not just because it busts any bracket that had the Longhorns, say, beating UNC and advancing to the Elite Eight. D'oh!) And to get worked over as badly as they did? The Longhorns are the Dud of the Tournament. I don't care how young they are: If Rick Barnes can't win with this much talent, he can't win, period.

Complete Sweet 16 coverage coming Monday morning. My bracket is pretty broken right now, but here's food for thought: If you used the "National Bracket" to make your picks, you'd be beating 90 percent of all individual brackets out there.

ORIGINAL POST: We can only hope that today's games match yesterday's for dramatic finishes -- with maybe one or two upsets thrown in for good measure. (If everyone -- um, me -- doubted UVA and they advance to the Sweet 16, does that count as an "upset?")

Upsets are fun for the first few rounds, but in the absence of a true Cinderella like George Mason, having top seeds duke it out makes for a better final 3-4 rounds. Think back to all those great late-round games from the '05 tourney.

So really, close games and buzzer beaters that send the top seeds on to the regionals is really the best of both worlds.

Why did Florida have to get stuck in such a crappy bracket? Being the compulsive contrarian that I am, I had to pick against them...so I took Wisconsin over Maryland to go to the final four. I was doing so well after the first round - 27/32 - but now I'm going to start slowly sliding back to the middle of the pack, unless all hell breaks loose again with the brackets...

The one thing I noticed about the gators today was how much faster they seem to be than Purdue. I never noticed how fast they really were. Of course maybe it is just that the big 10 plays a slower brand of basketball.

The SEC is really looking strong in this tournament. We might even get four in the sweet 16. Strong in football, strong in bball. Most dominant conference ever?

Not that anyone cares but Scott Kazmir threw six scoreless innings for the d-rays today. If only we could get another starter and a decent closer we might be ok.

Pakistan's cricket coach died. My dad said he was heartbroken over losing to Ireland who really suck at cricket.

@jonathan: pretty much yeah, he tends to clap like that when a call goes UF's way. I've never seen that sort of thing called taunting. In fact, i cant think of what would constitute taunting in NCAA BBall--a lot more than clapping, I think.

@ JohnathanYea, Noah is pretty much an overrated whiner. I doubt they would give him a T for taunting, but you would think that his coach would say something. Of course, I am waiting for the swipes at someone on the sidelines in the NCAA for him as well.

Dan, there's no one more frustrated than me right now - believe me - but it's not fair to toss Barnes under the bus like that.

As much -talent- as there was in Austin this year, this was the youngest team I've ever seen with lofty expectations. Even Carmelo's relatively young team had important senior contributors. Texas has four freshman and a sophomore. Blaming Rick for everything isn't fair. The guy's track record is outstanding.

If Kevin for some reason decides to return and Texas flames out NEXT year. . . well, then he'll have no excuse. But this year, I think we all got carried away. Texas lost for lots of reasons today - including Barnes - but jumping from "Rick is flawed" to "Rick will never win" isn't instructive.

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DanShanoff.com is a sports-blog spin-off of my long-time ESPN.com column, "The Daily Quickie." Anchored by an early-morning post of must-know topics, the blog is updated frequently throughout the day with new posts and user comments.